


Pure

by NanakiBH



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Character Development, Communication, Family, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, Innocence, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Change of Heart!Shido, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 00:43:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13446876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NanakiBH/pseuds/NanakiBH
Summary: He wasn't different from anyone else.





	Pure

**Author's Note:**

> This one feels like the thematic counterpart of [Bad Things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12778263). Another product of my daydreaming. Gotta write 'em all!

Akechi tipped his head back and closed his eyes, letting the shower's spray wash away the soap. With his eyes closed like that, his thoughts quickly began to disperse into the steam. A sigh slipped between his parted lips and was lost amid the sound of water rushing past his ears.

An unpleasant something at the back of his mind scraped its way forward.

With the Metaverse gone, he and Shido could no longer return to the way things were. Things were different. Shido was different. And he...

While everything else was changing, he seemed to be the same in many frustrating ways. He was still hopelessly stuck to Shido's side, but all of the resentment he'd once felt towards him had disappeared. He still wanted his attention, but he no longer had to beg for it. He still wanted to hate him, but he couldn't anymore – not in the slightest.

The scar on the left side of his chest throbbed with guilt.

He'd been hurt so many times by so many people. It wasn't only Shido. The people who hurt him all came and left their mark on him and then walked away. As they retreated in their own ways, he struggled to keep them within his grasp. The only part of them he could hold on to was the pain they left him with. Over time, that pain transformed into a blinding anger.

It was easy to recognize in hindsight. That was what made it so frustrating.

In the midst of it, he wasn't able to notice his own terribleness. His pain made it feel so easy to justify a horrible, pointless thing like revenge. It felt right, and he kept assuring himself that it was. Every bruise upon his heart had added up over time, staining it an almost indelible black. Looking inside himself, unable to see anything but his own pain, even his eyes lost their color.

The tears had wanted to fall, but they couldn't. He'd wanted to scream, but he'd forgotten how. The bullet reserved for Shido struck him instead and went straight through his chest and burst out the other side, releasing the pain within him for his eyes to see.

It was a disappointingly ordinary color of red. The pain that twisted him to such a despairing degree wasn't even unique. It wasn't special. It was the same color as anyone else's.

It was embarrassing.

A pathetic, anticlimactic ending like that would have been perfect for someone who'd become so consumed by their own delusions. Lying and pretending, deceiving and manipulating... He even hid the truth from himself. Before his vision faded, as red bitterness settled in his chest, he realized that there was little difference left between him and the person he was supposed to hate.

But...

He got what he wanted, even if he didn't deserve it. After his change of heart, his father was willing to accept responsibility for his pain.

And yet, it was still there, plaguing him. It couldn't simply be taken away. He carried a guilt for his selfishness that water couldn't wash away.

 

Akechi opened his eyes, droplets of water clinging to his lashes, and stared down at his feet, watching the water as it ran into the drain.

 

With that awareness of his own guilt, how was he supposed to face the camera? How could he continue to lie without hurting himself? He may not have undergone a change of heart, but the shape of his life had been rearranged, and he was left feeling out of place. He didn't know how to continue living as the person named 'Akechi Goro' any longer.

Did he really care about what anyone else thought of him...?

It felt like only Shido's opinion mattered. The most powerful and important man in the nation treated him as though _he_ were the most important.

The selfishness that still resided within the depths of Akechi's heart devoured his attention.

 

Putting his hands together, Akechi absently watched the water collect in his palms. Part of him was surprised that it didn't automatically turn black.

 

As he let go of it and watched it splash the tiles near his feet, he heard the door open.

He was able to make out Shido's shape through the shower door's frosted glass. 

“Decided to join me?” Akechi teased, raising his voice so he'd be heard over the water.

It was rude for someone to intrude upon him without knocking first, but he granted Shido unique privileges. He was his father, after all. Even if they hadn't become involved with each other, it wouldn't have been that outrageous for Shido to enter the bathroom while he was occupying it. Still rude, but not unforgivable. 

“Just looking for something,” he said.

“Is that another way of saying you're here to watch?” Akechi asked, placing a hand on his waist to entice him with the shape of his nude silhouette.

From what he could see, Shido didn't turn around to look at him. He continued searching the cabinet for whatever he came for. Once he found it, he headed straight for the door without even turning around, completely ignoring him.

Akechi pulled back the shower door, stopping him with the sound, and leaned out to regard him with incredulity. “Seriously? You're just going to leave? That's... odd for you.”

Shido turned, pushing up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I'm supposed to be somewhere right now and I have a headache.”

Akechi noticed the bottle of aspirin in his hand. A fair excuse.

“Hm? That's too bad. I won't bother you, then.” His hands hesitated on the edge of the door, unable to close it just yet. He sent a timid glance in Shido's direction. “...Feel better, papa.”

He closed the door then, but the hazy silhouette of his father remained on the other side. Shido came back in and leaned against the sink across from the shower.

“It's a little odd to see you up this early,” he said. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Did I not tell you?” Tapping a foot on the wet tiles, Akechi tried to recall. Unable to remember, he realized that he must have forgotten to tell him about his plans. “I'm going down to the TV station for a live interview. For now, I might not be a detective anymore, but I am still an idol.”

“An idol? An idol of what? No offense, but if you don't have the detective schtick, then...?”

“Wow, rude,” Akechi said with a scoff. “Believe it or not, there are still a lot of people who are interested in me. I had a lot of obsessed fans, you know. Some of them really hate me now, but that just means that they can't get me off their minds. Love me or hate me, people are still thinking about me and want to know all about me. The news about us being related turned some heads and suddenly made people who never had an interest in me before suddenly take notice. I think that's what you call 'fanbase crossover appeal'...?”

“Sounds like I inadvertently helped you out,” Shido remarked smugly, chuckling to himself. “So? Have you planned your responses? Knowing you, you already know what you're going to say.”

If only it were that easy. He'd spent an embarrassing amount of time wasting the water as he tried to imagine their questions and the way he'd respond. A lot of potentially uncomfortable questions came to mind. Unfortunately, he wasn't in the position where he could lay down what he would and wouldn't be willing to answer. The station was clearly hungry for his ratings, but they were pretending like their invitation was a blessing from the goodness of their hearts that he needed to be grateful for.

He should've rejected them and chosen some other avenue, offered himself to a different outlet...

They were going to take advantage of him for sure.

“Actually...” He rubbed a hand over his arm and nervously shifted his weight. “I don't know. I've already considered everything they could ask me, but I'm not sure what direction I should take with my answers. I saw online, my fans feel conflicted about the fact that you and I are related. There are threads speculating about what I might have done to help you with the election. I'm also still taking heat for the disappearance of the Phantom Thieves...”

“You're right. I doubt that they'll softball their questions. They're probably going to ask you about things that went unanswered during the trial. I wouldn't normally feel it necessary to tell you to be careful, but you sound troubled.”

The sound of concern in Shido's voice caught him off guard. Even though he knew Shido couldn't see him clearly through the glass, Akechi felt the need to turn his face away from him. “Th-... Thank you for your confidence. I think that things will... definitely be different this time...”

“I'm not going to tell you what you should say. Go ahead and tell them the truth if that's what you feel most comfortable with.”

Even without their secret business holding him back, there was no way he could openly speak the truth in front of the cameras. The raw truth would have made him sound insane and he would have found himself under the same kind of ridicule that Shido suffered. It was hilarious, in a way... He finally had his chance to come clean and tell the full and complete truth – he even had Shido's approval to do so – but no one would have believed him. The Metaverse was something that could only be believed by those who experienced it for themselves.

The truth was pointless.

Confessing was impossible.

He wanted to answer their questions with the truth... He didn't want to come up with any more lies. It was exhausting. If he and Shido could finally look at each other without hiding their intentions behind phony masks, then why couldn't he just...?

 

He screwed it up.

 

It was his fault.

 

Being unable to tell anyone the story of what really happened was the consequence of his actions. For him, it was fitting that Shido was the only person who would know of his every step and misstep. That feeling of guilt was always going to be trapped inside him.

“There are things I obviously can't say. Everyone always wanted to know what my personal life was like, but... Well, that secret's going to stay a secret for sure.”

“Really? You don't feel tempted to expose me as a pervert?”

Akechi began to laugh before he noticed the humorless tone of Shido's voice. He paused and cleared his throat and turned to squint at Shido's figure. “...Sorry. That _was_ a joke, wasn't it? Exposing our relationship would just make me feel embarrassed. I'm not going to use it to beg for sympathy or something if that's what you mean. I like being with you.” Yet, even those words sounded like a joke when they met his ears. It made him unconsciously curl his hands into fists at his sides, made his eyes bitterly meet the floor. “If people knew that, they'd think I'm a freak.”

He hated it. He was serious.

“Is that how you feel?” Shido asked.

“No.”

Maybe a part of him felt that way. Even if it were just a small part of him, it was at least big enough to acknowledge the way that others would interpret his feelings.

He had a lot of things to be sorry for, but those feelings felt too harmless to be counted among them. Compared to everything else, the unusual kind of happiness he found beside his father seemed like a small, petty thing. Whether he deserved even that much happiness seemed like a question he couldn't responsibly answer on his own. Its irony seemed like enough to forgive him for it.

 

The water that pelted his skin still remained clean even as it ran down his body.

 

“Would you like to practice?” Shido asked.

“Go ahead.”

The water wasn't going to stay warm for much longer. Before Shido came, he'd already spent enough time just standing there, thinking. It was a great place to let his thoughts wander, but it hadn't helped as much as he hoped.

Akechi felt a little awkward, so he pretended to busy himself instead of shutting off the water. He had the feeling he could answer more honestly if the shower door and the sound of the water remained between them.

“What do you think of Prime Minister Shido?”

“Really cutting to the chase, aren't you?” Akechi laughed, but he gave the question fair consideration. To his surprise, it didn't feel that difficult once he began talking, pretending as though he were speaking directly to the host who would interview him. “I think the country should be able to rest easily with him at the helm. Following the results, we've seen nothing but sincerity from him. You must admit that no other politician would be so forthcoming. A certain degree of corruption is always bound to occur behind the scenes, even if a new representative had been chosen. The fact is, hoping for a change in the results would be a waste of energy at this point. I think the change in his behavior indicates that his conscience wouldn't allow him to run this country dishonestly. Different as he may seem, the man you see now is certainly Shido Masayoshi, the person we all believed in.”

Akechi could hear Shido's smile in the appreciative sound he made.

“That was very kind. Thank you.”

Akechi waved a hand. “I don't think there's anyone who had more problems with you than me. If I was able to reconcile the results of the election that way, then I think others will be able to also accept you as you are now, regardless of what actions you took in the past.”

Shido's silhouette nodded. He paused, then he asked, “And, as a father, what do you think of him?”

The confidence Akechi possessed from adequately answering the previous question suddenly disappeared.

He knew that they would probably ask him something like that. Talking about Shido's politics was easy. It didn't feel terribly personal.

But a question like that...

No matter how he approached it, he feared revealing his real feelings; his anger, hate, his...

 

“If a question makes you uncomfortable, you can change the subject.”

 

That was true. He was skilled at talking his way around a question. There was no trap he couldn't wink and smile his way out of. But still... That question, as difficult as it was, wasn't a question he needed to avoid any longer.

He could answer it, even with a certain amount of truth in regards to the past.

Standing still, gazing nowhere, he told a version of the truth that could have been understood by anyone.

“It's hard to say,” he said honestly, expressing his uncertainty. “Although we met before, we were just mere acquaintances, two people walking past each other. I'm still getting to know him. Until now, I was trying to make it on my own with no family there to support me. After being let down in the past, I lost my faith in that word, 'family'. I was skeptical, but...” Releasing an unsteady breath, Akechi placed a hand against the wall and made the decision to trust in both his feelings and the words he chose to convey them with. “I want to believe in him.”

Following that confession, Shido didn't speak. He gave no further questions.

Just like he thought...

Though Shido probably wouldn't have admitted it, he must have asked him that question because he was personally curious how he would respond to it.

Without cameras surrounding him, Akechi didn't feel the pressure to sound exactly like the Akechi they would have expected. He didn't feel the need to hide himself in front of Shido any longer, either. His answer came from the part of him he'd once spitefully refused to acknowledge. There were other things he'd intentionally omitted, but there was no word he spoke worth regretting.

At least, he hoped they wouldn't be regretted...

With the water having long run cold, he shut it off and opened the door to face Shido. He was still there, leaning against the edge of the sink, both hands in front of him, clasped around the thing he initially went there for. His expression looked thoughtful. When he looked up and their eyes met, his brows pulled together in a way that Akechi didn't love.

Really...

No matter how much he hurt, there were remedies for pain.

Nothing was as terrible as he thought. Perhaps that was the perspective his second chance cursed him with.

 

Him...

That man...

Every single person around them...

 

They were all red inside, too.

 

As Akechi approached, dripping water across the bathroom floor, Shido took the white towel that awaited on the sink top and held it open for him. When he was close, he wrapped it around his shoulders and frisked his hands over his back and arms to help him dry.

Akechi kept his eyes lowered, staring blankly at the space between his feet.

“Everything I just said... Can it be the truth?” he asked quietly.

Shido stilled his hands. A few moments passed, punctuated finally by a somewhat troubled-sounding sigh. “I can't answer that by myself.” The hands on Akechi's shoulders tightened slightly, causing Akechi to look up, to see the seriousness in Shido's eyes. “I can only do what I can. Whether you choose to believe in the effort I put forth now, however...”

That part was up to him.

Akechi nodded slowly, understanding.

“Shido-san...” He immediately shook his head, finding that name strange on his tongue. “I always wanted to believe in you.”

“I don't think there's anything wrong with that, just like how it wasn't wrong of anyone else who wanted to believe in me.”

“I knew, though,” Akechi said. It would have been enough to make him laugh had it not also made him feel so pathetic. He'd known how terrible Shido was, but he'd allowed himself to believe in the praise and kindness he showed him. It was all too good to be true, but he wanted it to be real.

Shido's hands tightened even more firmly around his shoulders before he pulled him against his chest. “It wasn't wrong,” he insisted. “I betrayed your trust, but the fact that you trusted me at all... Someone like me, who clearly wasn't deserving...”

At times, that trust looked a lot like selfishness. He extinguished many lives so he could continue trusting him.

And yet Shido, in his newfound conscience, told him that his trust wasn't wrong. He sounded grateful, even.

Average; that was all it was. The same feelings that spurred him to kill for Shido were the same types of feelings that impacted other people's lives in other, far more mundane ways. The problem was, he let himself believe that those average feelings were enough to justify his actions.

He pressed his forehead to Shido's chest. “You're stupidly easy to forgive when you're nice. You were even stupidly easy to forgive when you were awful...”

He felt Shido's desperation in the firmness of his embrace.

“I'm so sorry.”

That apology and those like it, Akechi bathed in them. If the guilt that clung to the edges of his heart was never able to be washed away, then that would have been alright. He needed something to remind him of the extents he should never return to. No one else was going to punish him for the things he did.

Putting his arms around Shido, he rested his cheek against his chest, his wet hair dampening his shirt.

 

He wasn't undesirable. He wasn't unwanted. He wasn't unloved.

 

Those things could be true.

 

They were.

 

With a quiet sigh, Akechi separated himself from Shido and held the towel around himself.

“Sorry for getting you wet,” he muttered, patting the damp spot on Shido's chest which irritatingly clung to his voluptuous muscles. That image was going to get stuck in his head. “How's your headache? Talking to me isn't going to make you late now, is it?”

Laughing, Shido put a hand on top of his head and ruffled his hair. “What's up, baby? Worried about me? You sound like my wife.”

Swiping the hand off his head with a groan, Akechi pushed Shido away from the sink so he could ignore him and continue getting prepared for his interview. As he combed his hair, he narrowed his eyes at Shido's smug smile reflected over his shoulder in the mirror.

Ugh...

That was the Shido he loved – the one who could be so intelligent and insightful while also still being a total creep.

Akechi did his best to hold back a laugh. “You'd be a real threat to me if you ever figured out how to be charming without letting that tasteless personality of yours slip.”

“Oh yeah?” He grabbed Akechi by the hip and pulled him close. “I thought that's what you liked.”

Akechi's grin widened. He teasingly traced his fingers up Shido's chest and looked into his eyes. “You're asking for it.” He was close enough to knee him in the dick.

“I do love you when you're feisty.” Grasping Akechi's jaw, Shido leaned forward, pressing him against the edge of the sink top, and gave him a firm, straightforward kiss on the mouth. His lips lingered and he remained close for a moment, staring down into Akechi's eyes. He gave him one more unexpectedly gentle kiss, then told him softly, close to his ear, “You're going to be fine. Trust yourself.”

Akechi decided that he could spare an extra minute or two, wanting to stay like that for a little longer.

If he could let himself believe in Shido's sincerity, then he was surely going to find a way to eventually believe in his own goodness.


End file.
